Not Letting Go
by romywritergirl
Summary: She made him promise not to let go. Ten years later, Alex intends to keep that promise.


**Disclaimer: The characters and the universe are not mine.** Gift fic for Maiya.

The twelve year old walked down the aisle of the food store, glancing back at the list as he tried to isolate the brand of pesto someone had added.

"Rae," he called, holding a jar up to the light, "Is this the right one?"

He heard a woman's voice offer the faint utterance of his name, and he turned around wondering why Raven had said his name so weirdly.

When he saw the woman standing in front of him, the jar slipped out of his hand, falling almost in slow motion to the ground. It stopped a second before making impact, moving from two inches above the ground back to the shelf.

Her hand came to rest on the side of his cheek.

"…Mom?" he asked after a sharp intake of breath. His name was called again, this time by the shapeshifting blonde an aisle over. As Raven rounded the corner, the dark haired woman slipped around the other end, only stopping to whisper, "I'm sorry," before she disappeared.

"Who was that?" Raven asked, arms full of groceries she dumped into the cart next to Scott, as she plucked the pesto sauce off the shelf.

Only when the child did not respond did she stop to look at him, immediately becoming concerned upon seeing his pale face and shaking hands.

Alex perched on the edge of the thick leather chair in Charles' study as Scott recounted his story.

"It was her, Alex," the younger brother insisted.

"Mom's dead," Alex responded gently, "She died in the plane crash, Scott."

"That's what you thought about me, but if I survived couldn't Mom have too?" Scott effused.

"Bud, you know if they had survived they would have found us by now," Alex reasoned.

Scott exclaimed, "She did find me! Today! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"It wasn't Mom you saw, Scott," Alex replied, and at the look of frustration he saw on his younger brother's face, he quickly added, "It… was probably Nessa."

At Scott's crestfallen face, Alex looped an arm around him, pulling him into a hug. After the initial disappointment had passed, Scott pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes.

"Al," he started hesitantly, "If Nessa is alive why did she run away from me?"

"It doesn't matter," Alex replied, "Because we'll find her again."

Charles pulled the Cerebro helmet off, placing it on the console.

"I can feel her, but I'm unable to pinpoint her location," he explained, massaging his forehead gently, "She's blocking me. Very strongly, I might add."

"I didn't know that was possible with non-telepaths," Hank commented, turning to Alex, "And you're sure she doesn't have telepathic capabilities?"

"I haven't seen her in ten years," Alex muttered, "So no, Hank, I'm not really sure of her capabilities."

Hank put a hand on the teenager's shoulder and replied, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

Alex shrugged before turning back to Charles, "But you're sure she's somewhere in the city?"

"The way that she is surrounded by other minds and stimuli, I'm confident in the fact she is somewhere in the city of New York," the Professor affirmed.

"We'll just have to find her the old fashioned way," Erik remarked, picking his coat up off the back of the chair.

"I want to come," Scott asserted.

"No," Alex replied immediately, "Stay here with Sean."

Brown eyes flashed behind ruby quartz.

"She's my sister too," Scott accused, standing up.

"I know," Alex said, ruffling his younger brother's hair, "She never let me forget it, and you can remind her yourself later. Just trust me on this, little brother."

Sean leaned in, wrapping an arm around Scott, and said, "Come on, we never get this place to ourselves. We can make ice cream sundaes and mattress surf down the stairs."

Charles' left eye twitched at the latter proposal, but the rest of the mansion's inhabitants laughed.

"The back staircase is the best one for that," Raven offered with a grin, on her way out of the room, "But if you rig the dumbwaiter you can climb inside and get it to drop from the attic to the basement."

"Raven Xavier!" the Professor sputtered.

"Don't worry brother," Erik teased, "I'm sure everything can be fixed with some wood glue."

Charles paled as they left the room.

Erik insisted on driving the five into the city.

"The nearer we get, the stronger her shield is," Charles commented, "I haven't felt anything like it since… well, since Emma."

Raven glowered at the mention of the blonde telepath.

"Has Vanessa had her powers since childhood?" Erik asked, shifting lanes.

"As long as I can remember," Alex answered.

"Was she able to control it at a young age?" Hank pondered.

Alex grimaced but didn't respond to the question.

Charles gasped suddenly and his hands went to his head in pain.

"What is it? Charles?" Raven asked, her hand going to his shoulder.

He smiled tightly, "Nothing, dear. She's just rephrasing her request to be left alone. Quite loudly."

"Tell her I don't care," Alex stated, "That I'm not going to leave her alone until we talk."

"Turn left," the Professor spoke urgently, "The strain caused her to drop her shields for a moment and I got a lock on her. She's on the move so we must hurry."

Erik dodged cars and traffic laws as they closed in on the girl of their search. Charles scanned the vicinity, stating, "She's close. We can continue searching on foot."

The five departed the car, and Charles began, "Yes, now Alex, if you have anything that might be of use now would be the time…" before trailing off after looking around and realizing the young mutant was nowhere to be found.

The metal wielder turned back from where he was paying at the meter with a grimace.

Alex shook aside the message he had received from Charles, namely the fact that it started and ended with the words 'young man'. He focused on concentrating against broadcasting his location or plan in an attempt at blocking telepathic communication that he had learned over his past year at the Institute for Gifted Youngsters.

He stilled as he heard an all too familiar voice in his head say, " _Guess they didn't teach you that much."_

He concentrated, half on responding, the other half on not panicking.

" _Where are you?"_ he queried, before keying in on a glint of silver coming from a rooftop across the street. Squinting, he could just make out a person with long brown hair fluttering in the wind.

" _You won't find me, Alex. Just go home,"_ she replied.

He put his training with Erik to use as he used a well positioned dumpster to jump onto the precariously placed fire escape on the second floor. Crossing his fingers that no one would be looking out their window, he got a foothold into the collapsed ladder and after resolving not to look down, started climbing. Halfway up the twenty story apartment building, he came across a broken part of the ladder. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to very delicately use the plasma he built up in his hand to fuse the two pieces of metal back together. Finishing the ascent, he snuck up on the girl in question.

"So my shielding skills are weak, huh?" he asked, leaning against an abandoned air conditioning system.

She turned around very slowly, taking a step back as she did.

"I thought you were on the West side," she stated suspiciously.

"I'm a good liar," he replied evenly, "And I've picked up a few things."

The corner of her lip turned up a little as she responded, "Mom would be disappointed about that."

He laughed and added, "After prison, I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed like such a big deal."

"Prison?" the girl challenged, an eyebrow raised, "Let me guess. You set a building on fire."

He shook his head ruefully, running a hand through his hair.

"So what are you, a full on telepath now?" he asked, leaning against the brick.

She pursed her lips and turned away from him.

"Something like that," she responded, taking a breath before continuing, "I assume the others don't know where you are."

"Not yet," he replied, "But they will soon, so I recommend you start talking."

"There's nothing to say, Alex," she shot back, pushing the hand he had rested on her shoulder off.

"Really? Nothing to say? Despite the fact you clearly knew we were alive and tried hiding from us?" Alex questioned, with a deepening scowl.

He took her glare as a challenge and continued, "I know you knew we were alive. There's no way you were just randomly in that grocery store. You were watching Scott. You've probably been watching."

Charles' voice pierced through his head but he pushed it away.

"You let us keep believing that you were dead for all this time. Do you know how painful that's been?" the blonde asked, his voice practically a shout.

"Painful?" she spat, "You want to talk to me about painful? Pull up a chair and get in line, because you're not the only one who owns the misery business."

He stilled.

"I lost _everything_ that night," she seethed.

"And I didn't? Up until a year ago when we found Scott I thought I was the only one who survived. Up until six hours ago we thought you were dead. So how are you alone in this?" he countered.

"You know why," she stated with darkening eyes, "Neither of us will ever be able to forget that night."

"It will haunt my sleep for the rest of my life, but that doesn't mean I need to let it haunt me when I'm awake too," he responded, vowing not to let his voice break, "The fire… and falling through the sky… and Mom pushing you and Scott into my arms and telling me not to let go… I'll never be able to forget that. I let it define my life for so long but now, at the institute, with Scott… I'm not letting go of now for anything, not even the past. I'm not going to let go of you either."

"That's because you don't remember that night. You just have bits and pieces," she responded, deftly scrubbing away a solitary tear that slid down her cheek.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, "I remember that night perfectly."

"What was the first thing that happened when the engine started failing?" she asked, stepping back further away from her twin.

When Alex didn't respond right away she gestured for him to think.

"Mom put Scott's parachute on," he replied eventually, not sure where the conversation was headed.

"And then what?" the girl questioned looking far older than her years.

"She threw us parachutes and told us to put them on," he responded, tilting his head to the side, "What are you getting at?"

She ignored his question and continued, "And then what did she do?"

"I don't know. Probably got Scott to stop crying," he stated, his nose wrinkled.

"Come on Alex, actually think about that night. Close your eyes and allow yourself to see exactly what you've been blocking out for the past decade," she ordered, her words with a bit of a bite to them.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Nessa," the blonde youth responded, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

"I want you to THINK," she shouted, "Actually THINK about what happened that night. What was Mom doing?"

He swallowed and closed his eyes and after a few minutes of silence he replied, "I don't know. She was standing there in the middle of the plane with her hands up. Some weird prayer pose or something, I guess."

Brown orbits met green as she stared into her brother's eyes.

Without for a second breaking eye contact she slowly asked, "What was Mom doing, Alex?"

After five minutes of silence and staring, he whispered, "She was… she was trying to keep the plane up."

"How?" the girl persisted, not for a second giving an inch of latitude, "How was she trying to keep the plane up?"

Not sure whether he was upset by the fact that her line of questioning made him feel like a small child or the fact that he was considering information he had locked out his brain many years early, he knew he didn't have to speak verbally in order to respond to her question.

 _Her powers,_ he thought softly, knowing his sister would hear him, _Mom was like us._

"She could have kept the plane up," the girl returned, this time speaking as lowly as his voice had been in her head, reiterating, "She could have kept the plane up. She was strong enough and brave enough and just crazy enough to try. She would have kept the plane up."

"But she didn't," Alex stated, looking intently at his the girl who kept stepping backwards towards the edge of the roof.

"Her focus was split," the dark haired girl murmured.

"Stuff was flying around the plane. She was trying to divert it from us to protect us," Alex expounded.

Nessa closed her eyes.

"Why Alex?" she began, "Tell me why everything was flying around the plane."

"Because it was hurdling through the sky," he responded in a monotone.

"You know that's not why," she replied, her voice barely a whisper.

"It's not your fault," he stated, "We were all just kids. It wasn't anyone's fault."

"It's my fault Mom's dead," she screamed, "Do you understand that? Do you understand why I can't go with you? Why I can't see Scott, Mom's perfect little baby? _I killed her,_ Alex. _I killed her_."

"She died in the plane crash," Alex said resolutely, "She died in the freaking plane crash, Vanessa. It's not your fault."

"You know that's not true. The plane would have never crashed if she was still alive before it went down," the girl responded, the solitary tear being replaced by a pool of watery tears. .

"You can't blame yourself for this. She would have never wanted you to go about living with that kind of guilt, Ness," the youth stated, enunciating every word.

"I was scared and my powers were going haywire and everything was flying around the plane. Mom couldn't calm me down with her powers and keep the plane in the air at the same time but she was trying. She was trying so hard. It was _my_ shrapnel that went through her heart. It was _my_ junk flying around in the air that killed her," the girl half cried, half yelled, before whispering, "and she still had the time to put my parachute on after. Even when she knew that she wasn't going to be able to keep the plane in the air, even when Dad knew there was nothing he could do to fix the engine; even when they knew they were going to die, they still protected us. It was my fault Mom died, and still her last act was saving me and pushing me and Scott into your arms."

"She told me not to let go," Alex said softly, "And all I know is that I woke up from a coma two weeks later and found out I had let go. So you're not the only one with survivor guilt. But you know Mom would not have wanted us walking through our lives carrying that kind of burden on our shoulders. She loved us too much for that, and you just need to accept that and move on."

"I can't," she sobbed, "I can't Alex."

"Then don't do it for you. Do it for Mom and Dad. Do it for Scott. Do it for whoever you have to do it for, as long as you do it. This is our second chance, Nessa. They only happen once."

"That might be one time too many in my case," the girl replied.

"Nonsense," the fedora clad instructor stated, stepping out from behind the roof access door, "If I was deemed worthy of a second chance, we all are," he stated with a pointed look.

Alex extended a hand in her direction.

"Please, Nessa. Trust me. I'm pulling the big brother card. Please just come back with us and give it a chance," he beseeched.

"I'm older," she responded immediately, her gaze not drifting from the unlikely duo in front of her.

 _"_ By six minutes. Get over it," Alex replied just as quickly, causing the corner of Erik's mouth to curl up slightly.

"I'll come see Scott," she drawled after a few minutes of silence, "But I'm not promising anything. I just need to make sure that you're feeding him enough and not letting him subsist on chocolate bunnies."

"That was one time!" He exclaimed.

"One night," she stated, "One night, Alex. That's all I'm promising you."

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she started climbing down the fire escape.

Alex stared down a minute after her before feeling Erik's hand on his shoulder. Briefly relaxing into the comfort, he smiled a little.

"If I remember correctly, you only promised us one night as well," the man stated fondly, "And look how that turned out."

"I don't think any of us are completely sure how much of that is related to Charles' mind powers," Alex responded with a laugh, leaning into Erik's arm, before heading down the fire escape after his sister.

"Hey Erik," he began as they climbed down. The man looked down at him with an inviting, "Hmm." The youth continued, "…I'm glad I stuck around too."

Erik didn't hide his grin this time as they climbed down.

"Me too," he replied, "Me too."


End file.
